Recapitulación de los chistes de elefantes que se contaban en el colegio‏

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Elephant jokes

An elephant joke is a joke, 

almost always an absurd riddle or conundrum 

and often a sequence of such, that involves an elephant. 

Elephant jokes were a fad in the 1960s, 

with many people constructing large numbers 

of them according to a set formula. 

Sometimes they involve parodies or puns.

Three examples of elephant jokes are:

Q: How can you tell that an elephant is in the bathtub with you?

A: By the smell of peanuts on its breath.

Q: How can you tell that an elephant has been in your refrigerator/ice box?

A: By the footprints in the butter/cheesecake/cream cheese.

and

Q: What time is it when an elephant sits on your fence?

A: Time to build a new fence.

History

Elephant jokes first appeared in the United States in 1962. 

They were first recorded in the Summer of 1962 in Texas, 

and gradually spread across the U.S., 

reaching California in January/February 1963. 

By July 1963, elephant jokes were ubiquitous 

and could be found in newspaper columns, 

and in TIME and Seventeen magazines, 

with millions of people working 

to construct more jokes 

according to the same formula.

Both elephant jokes and Tom Swifties 

were in vogue in 1963, anwrenre reported

 in the U.S. national press. 

Whilst the appeal of Tom Swifties 

was to literate adults, 

and gradually faded over subsequent decades, 

the appeal of elephant jokes 

was mainly to children, and has lasted. 

Elephant jokes began circulation 

primarily amongst schoolchildren, 

and have been discovered afresh 

by subsequent generations of children, 

remaining, in Isaac Asimov's words 

"favorites of youngsters 

and of unsophisticated adults".

Asimov discusses one particular elephant joke 

that he states is notable 

for the exceptional sophistication of its humour. 

The joke was told in the aftermath 

of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, 

who had walked into Dallas police headquarters 

carrying a gun, and, in Asimov's words, 

whilst still maintaining the absurdity 

necessary for elephant jokes 

"carried a quick overtone of chill rationality":

Q: What did the Dallas chief of police 

say when the elephant walked into the police station?

A: Nothing! He didn't notice.

Structure

Elephant jokes rely upon absurdity 

and incongruity for their humour, 

and a contrast with the normal 

presumptions of knowledge about elephants. 

They rely upon absurdist reasoning 

such as that the only way 

to detect an elephant in one's bathtub 

or in one's refrigerator 

is by the smell of its breath, 

or by the presence of footprints in the butter; 

such as that an elephant 

would be found dressed in a nun's habit; 

or such as that an elephant could climb a cherry tree, 

that an elephant would paint its toenails, 

and that simply painting its toenails 

in turn would be sufficient in order to camouflage it. 

However, this reasoning is not outright nonsense, 

and elephant jokes do contain a small core of conventional logic. 

Although that is not the primary method 

of distinguishing them, 

elephants and prunes do differ in colour. 

If painting an elephant's toenails 

were a camouflage mechanism, 

red would be the appropriate 

colour for a cherry tree. 

Black, white, and grey 

would be the colours 

of an elephant dressed 

in a nun's habit, 

and not the colours 

of an elephant dressed 

in some other form of costume.

Elephant jokes are often parodies 

of conventional children's riddles. 

In conventional riddles, 

the answer to the riddle 

is usually a well-known item, 

such as an egg. 

In elephant jokes, 

the answer to the riddle 

is something that is usually 

outlandish or absurd, 

and impossible for those 

who do not know 

the punchline to guess, 

such as Campbell's Cream of Elephant Soup.

David Ritchie describes elephant jokes 

as comprising double frame shifts. 

The joke about the elephant in the bathtub 

comprises first a frame shift from a realistic frame 

("in which an elephant could not possibly 

be found anywhere near my bathtub") 

to a fantasy frame; and then, in the punchline, 

a second frame shift in which the fantasy 

is in its turn logically subverted by the idea 

that "none of the obvious attributes of elephants 

(e.g. size and color) is deemed relevant, 

and the salience of a totally secondary association 

with eating peanuts is increased". 

He states that the humour of elephant jokes 

derives in part from the contradiction 

between "the logical and expected 

schema-driven answer" to the riddle, 

and the actual absurd punchline.

Elephant jokes usually comprise 

a series of connected riddles, 

rather than a single standalone riddle. 

The series usually compounds the absurdity, 

with succeeding riddles in the joke 

undermining the logical structures 

that are implied by the answers 

in the preceding ones. 

For example:

Q: How do you shoot a blue elephant?

A: With a blue elephant gun.

Q: How do you shoot a yellow elephant?

A: Have you ever seen a yellow elephant?

Q: How do you shoot a red elephant?

A: Hold his trunk shut until he turns blue, 

and then shoot him with the blue elephant gun.

And:

Q: How do you shoot a purple elephant?

A: Paint him red, hold his trunk shut until he turns blue, 

and then shoot him with the blue elephant gun.

Similarly:

Q: How many elephants will fit into a Mini?

A: Four: Two in the front, two in the back.

Q: How many giraffes will fit into a Mini?

A: None. It's full of elephants.

Q: How do you get two whales in a Mini?

A: Along the M4 and across the Severn Bridge.

Q: How do you know 

     there are two elephants in your refrigerator?

A: You can hear giggling when the light goes out.

Q: How do you know there are three elephants in your refrigerator?

A: You can't close the door.

Q: How do you know there are four elephants in your refrigerator?

A: There's an empty Mini parked outside.

Elephant jokes thus not only deliberately 

undermine the conventions of riddles, 

they even act to undermine themselves. 

This even extends to undermining the implied premise, 

expected by those that are familiar with elephant jokes, 

that an elephant joke is automatically illogical, 

or even involves elephants at all. 

For example:

Q: What do elephants have that nothing else has?

A: Baby elephants.

Q: What is gray, has four legs, and a trunk?

A: A mouse going on vacation.

Q: What is brown, has four legs, and a trunk?

A: A mouse coming back from vacation.

Q: What has eight legs, two trunks, four eyes, and two tails?

A: Two elephants.

There can even be an off-colour tinge:

Q: Why is an elephant big, grey and wrinkly?

A: Because if it was small, white and hard it would be an aspirin.

Q: Why are golf balls small and white?

A: Because if they were big and grey they would be elephants.

One time Gong Show act Mike Elephant 

is remembered for the following joke:

Q: What's the difference between an elephant and a plum?

A: Their colour.

Q: What did Tarzan say to Jane when he saw the elephants coming?

A: Here come the elephants.

Q: What did Jane say to Tarzan when she saw the elephants coming?

A: Here come the plums; she was colour blind.

Elephant jokes can also use their inherent absurdity 

to point up the inherent absurdity in some current events. 

One such joke from the early '60's refers to an incident 

in President Kennedy's on-again-off-again support 

for Cuban exiles' attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro:

Q: How do you get 2,000 elephants to invade Cuba?

A: Promise them air support!

Symbolism

Elephant jokes are seen by many commentators 

as symbolic of the culture of the United States and the UK in the 1960s. 

Elliot Oring notes that elephant jokes 

dismiss conventional questions and answers, 

repudiate established wisdom, 

and reject the authority of traditional knowledge. 

He draws a parallel between this 

and the counterculture of the 1960s, 

stating that "disestablishment was the purpose of both," 

pointing to the sexual revolution and noting that 

"[p]erhaps it was no accident that many 

of the elephant jokes emphasized 

the intrusion of sex into the most innocuous areas."[3]

Abrahams and Dundes, in their paper 

On elephantasy and elephanticide, 

consider elephant jokes 

to be convenient disguises for racism, 

and symbolised the nervousness of white people 

about the civil rights movement. 

Whilst blatantly racialist jokes 

became less acceptable, 

elephant jokes were a useful proxy. 

Abrahams and Dundes take the joke

Q: What is big and grey and comes in quarts?

A: An elephant.

and state that the 

"big and grey and comes in quarts" 

is in fact a reference "to the supposed 

mammoth nature of black sexuality." 

Similarly, the joke about an elephant in the bathtub 

is argued to be a reference to the increased 

intrusion of black people 

into "the most intimate areas of white life."

Oring strongly disagrees with this view, writing: 

"The Civil Rights movement, of course, 

was an integral part of the countercultural revolution. 

But there is no reason to view it as 

the single force conditioning the joke cycle. 

Much more than the relations 

between the races 

was being turned on its ear. 

Reducing elephant jokes 

to a mere front for racial aggression, 

it seems to me, not only misses 

the larger sense of what the jokes are about, 

but the larger sense of what was going on 

in the society at the time." 

and continuing: 

"Elephant joking is more 

than a description of the episodic career 

of an animal with a phallic nose. 

What engenders the humor in such jokes 

is the violation of categories of expectation, 

and not images of subjugation, degradation, 

or feminization of the elephant."

Charles Gruner agrees with Oring 

that Abrahams' and Dundes' explanation 

(that "the elephant is an ambivalent father figure" 

that is, in reality, "the black man 

(perceived as a sexual threat) 

that stands hidden 

behind the image of the elephant") 

is an "explanation from Freudian 

Monsterland [that] holds no water."

Gruner however disagrees with Oring 

about the chronological topicality 

of the elephant joke 

and its relation to social upheavals, 

arguing from personal experience 

of "one of the best motion picture 

sight gags in history", 

where Jimmy Durante in the 1962 movie 

Billy Rose's Jumbo is attempting 

to sneak an elephant unseen through a circus. 

Upon coming around a tent 

and being faced with a crowd of people 

and a policeman who demands 

"Where do you think 

you are you going with that elephant?" 

Durante backs against the elephant, 

arms wide, and asks, innocently, 

"What elephant?" 

Gunder proposes that the success of this sight gag 

spawned in comic writers the idea 

of "hiding the elephant by all sorts of ridiculous means," 

and thus, by extension to "other silly, stupid comparisons", 

the whole genre of elephant jokes

A turnabout to the Blind men and an elephant 

cited below is the joke about the 4 blind elephants who felt a human. 

The first reports that humans are flat, the other three agree.

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Fuente: Internet